Major e-governance training programme for babus begins next month

The first batch for eGEP will have 25 officers in the six-week course covered over two modules; one in summer and the next in autumn.

Page 1 of 4

NEW DELHI: Come July and our babus will be back in school. The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) will begin an e-governance training module called the e-Governance Executive Training Programme (eGEP).

This is the first such national-level programme for officers at the level of under secretary, section officer, deputy director, assistant director, tehsil and block level officer or equivalent. They will be nominated by their department heads and will need five years' experience to qualify.

The programme comes under the larger National e Governance Programme (NeGP), under which government Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) like core banking and Passport Seva Kendras were executed.

The first batch for eGEP will have 25 officers in the six-week course covered over two modules; one in summer and the next in autumn. They will be nominated by their department heads. "The objective of the programme is to train selected officers from within line ministries/departments, who are supporting/managing or have been identified to support/manage MMPs under the NeGP or other e-Governance projects," says the program brochure uploaded on the DeitY website.

Joint Secretary Dr Rajendra Kumar confirmed that the project outlay is Rs 9.9 crore for a year in which eight such programmes will be conducted.

With a class size of 25, covering all officers across the country will require a massive exercise. "We are looking at more state and sector-specific programmes for the future," says Deepa Sengar, director, capacity building at DeitY. Trainers, says Sengar, have been identified by the National Institute of Smart Government, and will come from government bodies like CERT-In and DIT, and even from the private sector.

The programme brochure identifies various areas that will be covered as a part of the course. It lists, among others: technology trends in hardware, software, communications and networks, cyber security management, national and international e-governance practices and more. "These officers are already involved in MMPs. So we will focus on things like framing detailed project reports and requests for proposals for e-governance projects. It will also cover data digitization and stakeholder management," says Sengar.

Vashima Shubha, a senior consultant at DeitY says that officers undergoing the eGEP will need to come to the classroom prepared with a project idea and work on it through the duration of the course. There were other such courses under the umbrella of "CIO Programmes", which have been shorter in duration, and for senior officers. Two batches have completed that already. "This program is even more rigorous than that. Officers are expected to ideate and execute a project in the duration of it," says Shubha.

The course also has an overseas component where officers will be taken abroad to study e-governance initiatives on ground. "We have some countries like South Korea, Estonia, Singapore and Slovenia under consideration. Let's see what suits them best," says Gupta. This will be in the second phase of the program, which is to take place in September-October.

Sengar says that DeitY has organized 115 such programs in the last two years in the past for different sets of officers with different requirements. "Those were shorter five-week training programmes at state level earlier for such officers. This is the first time that it will be held at a national level," says Sengar.